Seven Saints of Talis

Fallout: Dark Heresy

The party journeys south to Heirburgh, along the remains of a pre-War highway. They pass through the remains of several settlements, all abandoned, some eerily so, before arriving in Heirburgh. The village hires the party to dispose of some giant ants, which are currently nesting nearby. The party does so, deploying nail-bombs and dynamite to blast the tunnels closed, and handily resolves the issue.

The village of Heirburgh is a fishing village along the southern coast of the Reach, and the party is able to trade ant meat and other goods for room, board, salt and fish. The villagers are cautious, but friendly enough. During the night, a great, luminescent sea-beast moves past the village in the dead of night, causing much consternation and alarm. Though none can identify what creature it is, it leaves the village unharmed, excepting an oily, noisome sheen that washes ashore the following morning.

The party spends a week or so working alongside the villagers, accumulating salt and fish for their labors, restocking their supplies. When the party’s stores are replenished, they set out along the Long Road once again, heading along the coast for Deacon’s Ferry, a town built out of a former naval station. Along the way, the remains of several other settlements, all abandoned, are found, as is the ruins of a raided caravan.

Arriving at the walled town of Deacon’s Ferry, it is noted that the purple-and-yellow banners of the Children of the Atom, a rather extreme faction of the Machine Cult of Mars, fly from the battlements. Soon,the party finds a small band of monks from the Children of the Atom under attack from a sizable force of Wasteland bandits. Seizing the opportunity, the group engages the bandits, and, after a pitched battle, manage to kill most and drive the rest off. Thankful for the rescue, the surviving members of the Children of the Atom get the party past the skitaarii guarding the town’s gates.

The posse at the farmstead gathers the information that they can, learning that a large number of beast-like bipeds had recently moved through the area, ransacking the farm and killing the residents in a manner most foul. The lone survivor, mad with fear and covered in blood, is currently in custody at the Sheriff’s station in Celestial Hills. The party returns to town, bearing word of the possibility of an impending attack. They inform the Sheriff, and then the Witch-Finder, Carterius, who stays his hand, telling them that the time is not yet right to offer his services to the town.

In town, many members of the party are hanging around Carterius at Madame Dravia’s brothel. They learn that things are not entirely what they appear to be. While it was at first assumed that Lorelei was a prisoner of the Witch-Finder, evidence indicates a different sort of relationship, as the Tribal girl is quick to argue with the Witch-Finder in her tribal babble, and spends a lot of her time slamming doors and stomping off after their arguments. Carterius reveals, after one of her tirades, that he has little idea what she’s saying, as he only speaks a bit of her language. Still, he spends most of his time availing himself of all of the services on offer at Madame Dravia’s.

A few days later, a sizeable force of Beastmen approach the town, and demand the surrender of “the witch”. Carterius speaks to the Mayor and bargains for a very high price per head for every mutant on the field. The town parlays with the Skaven for awhile, before it is realized that the rat-men are simply stalling for time. Not content with waiting for them to spring whatever trap they have planned, Carterius goes over the wall to engage them directly. Perhaps foolishly, Dino follows, and the battle is joined as the Skaven catapults begin lobbing globes of Warp-Fire at the walls.

The townsfolk are pressed by the invaders when a flood of Skaven and Rat-Ogres boil out of the ancient sewer systems from beneath the city, having tunneled their way in through the very ground. Luckily, most of the rats seem more intent on pillaging and looting than actually fighting, though a strong vanguard push their way towards the Twin Eagles. During the street-to-street fighting, Lorelei rallies a mob of townsfolk (using her Witch-powers) while Phil attempts to herd some of the town’s whores into a drainage ditch for selling into slavery later. Carterius, however, comes upon him, having learned that the thief had stolen the powercells to his Steelburner laspistols, and demonstrates that weapon’s function point-blank to his head. Carterius steps over the smouldering body and rejoins the battle while Jill comes up, undetected, and finishes Phil off, taking his heart as a sacrifice to the families wronged by him.

The fighting at the Twin Eagles is furious as Rat-Ogres attempt to batter down the front doors, while Tsac stands in the belfry, firing down at the horde and throwing what explosives he has. The Rat-Ogres manage to smash their way through, however, and a flood of the misshapen creatures pours into the temple. They are met, however, by a priest, Severus, who, sickened that so many abominations should defile holy ground, pulls the pin on a suicide vest of grenades and throws himself into the press. The resulting explosion blows out the windows and flattens several flimsy structures on the block, but those who witnessed his act consider him a martyr of the Saints and the God-Emperor of Mankind, for his sacrifice took a heavy toll on the enemy.

Arriving at the Temple, the party chases a few of the surviving Skaven into the catacombs, winding their way through the stacks of crates and wine-racks that fill its basement. They discover a wall crudely battered through that leads them into the ancient waterworks beneath the city. There, they find a group of Skaven Plague-Monks performing some sort of ritual while preparing large vats of foul fluids, which they are preparing to deposit into the city’s water supply!

Battle is joined once again and the Plague-Monks are slain, though not before they manage to open a rift in the very fabric of space and time. From this rift steps a woman clad in a strange miasma of iridescent colors and shifting hues. She seizes an ornate vessel that was born by one of the Plague-Monks, and taunts Carterius with cryptic allusions. Shots are fired at her, but some sort of energy field protects her. She laughs and steps back through the portal.

Above ground, the last of the Skaven and Beast-men are driven off, and the surviving townsfolk hail the party as heroes. Rebuilding efforts begin almost immediately while a heroes wake is held for the slain, with Severus being the most-honored of the fallen. Carterius demands the Twin Eagles cleared, as the Ruinous Powers were invoked in the creation of the Warp-portal, and he and Lorelei set to work in trying to figure out who that Dark Lady was, what she took, and how the Skaven managed to break in.

In the course of their investigations, an old, military-style radio is discovered. Dino communes with its machine spirit, which is badly corrupted with age and a length of time in close association with the Skaven, but he is able to acquire a few scraps of information from the device. However, the information appears to be encoded, or references something the party cannot decipher. Carterius reveals that the item taken by the Dark Lady was a relic belonging to an Imperial Saint who once walked Talis. Why the Arch-Enemy would be interested in such things, though, he has no idea. He meets with various people around town, informing them of his intent to travel to The Hub to meet with a contact there who can help decipher the code. Lorelei, in her own way, makes him bring Carterius and Tsac. A few days later, the party sets out for Heirburgh, as White Chapel (Carterius informs them) is populated by a particularly intolerant cult that he has no desire of tangling with at this time.

The story begins...

The party resides in Celestial Hills, a small farming community in the middle of the Reach, a Wasteland kingdom that has risen over the last few centuries following the devastation of the Night of Fire. Bored and in search of adventure, the party sets out to purge a nearby cult of heretics, located a few days by foot on the other side of a spur of mountains.

En route to the coven’s hiding place, the party encounters a man they recognize as a professional monster-slayer, a Witch-Finder, identified by the pair of sanctified swords across his back. Accompanying the warrior-priest is a teenaged girl, obviously a tribal by her attire, who seems to speak not a word of Low Gothic. The Witch-Finder introduces himself as Seyan Carterius, and the girl as Lorelei, “his witch”. Continuing on, the party encounters a stretch of highway where a row of impaled bandits has been erected, disappearing into the Wastelands.

Drawing near to the suspected coven of heretics, the party is alarmed to discover that these heretics are, in fact, members of the Brotherhood of Steel, a militant faction of the Cult of the Machine God. Lacking both the numbers and the firepower to deal with the power-armored soldiers, the party turns tail and returns to Celestial Hills, sharing the road with the Witch-Finder and his prisoner.

Once they return, the hour is late, and Carterius and Lorelei must stay outside of town until the next morning. Once the next day dawns,they enter town, Carterius serene as if he expected that reception, Lorelei grumbling in her own language. Once there, Carterius makes his way to the local brothel. Some priest he seems to be! Lorelei tags along, having nowhere else to go, though she seems less than thrilled by the idea, and has been eying one of the locals who they met on the road, a local waif by the name of Tsac.

Not long afterwards, a crowd gathers outside the brothel, demanding that the witch be cast out, for it is known that they bring ruin and desolation wherever they go. Carterius addresses the crowd and, in an impassioned speech to the crowd, convinces them that he is a priest of the Saint Inanna As’Ishtar, Beloved of the God-Emperor, and that, under his protection, the witch is of no danger to the crowd. Swayed by the fervor of his oratory, the crowd disperses.

Elsewhere, the town Arbiters are dispatched to one of the local farms to investigate what the Sheriff suspects is a mass killing. Forming a posse with a few townsfolk, the Arbiters ride out and find the farm deserted, with most of the building ransacked and showing signs of forced evacuation. In the root-cellar of the main farmhouse, a grisly scene is discovered: the ranch-owner, his family and all of the ranch-hands brutally murdered in a ritual manner, the signs of Chaos obvious.

A blog for your campaign

While the wiki is great for organizing your campaign world, it’s not the best way to chronicle your adventures. For that purpose, you need a blog!

The Adventure Log will allow you to chronologically order the happenings of your campaign. It serves as the record of what has passed. After each gaming session, come to the Adventure Log and write up what happened. In time, it will grow into a great story!

Best of all, each Adventure Log post is also a wiki page! You can link back and forth with your wiki, characters, and so forth as you wish.

One final tip: Before you jump in and try to write up the entire history for your campaign, take a deep breath. Rather than spending days writing and getting exhausted, I would suggest writing a quick “Story So Far” with only a summary. Then, get back to gaming! Grow your Adventure Log over time, rather than all at once.